Memory
by SHA260
Summary: TsengRufus, written for a contest on dA. Dark. When I say dark, I mean it. Character death and suicide. Still one of my best works.


He sits, staring unseeing out into the darkness of his office. Many floors below, the crowd are at the doors, baying for blood and beating them down. Rather than surrender, he is taking the honourable way out, though they will undoubtedly call him a coward for it. As it is, he will not leave them his death on their conscience - if there is one thing a Turk knows how to deal with, it is having blood on their hands. On top of so many innocent lives now, it seems strangely fitting to end it by his own hand.

Another pause, then a half smile - if he is denying them their chance at a trial, the least he can do is give them something of what they want, and so he opens the top drawer of his desk and removes a photograph that nobody knew even existed. He takes a moment to study the faces: that impassive mask of his own, barely changed after all these years, and staring with almost fiery dark eyes into the camera lens he has turned his head to look into; Reno, that predatory grin which was so perilous to ignore shining from beneath the perpetually untidy cascade of flame which had remained barely tamed; the arrogance of the third figure hadn't changed either, for all that it was barely seen these days - present in his attitude but never on his face. That almost malevolent grin, however, had not been seen in years. He had locked all of those emotions away behind that icy mask when he had become the leader he was born to be.

Tseng casts his mind back - not to a decade past, but instead to barely an hour before, to that scene which is left upstairs, to be discovered when ShinRa falls. He almost smiles again at that, fighting the urge to shake his head, unafraid to show his emotions now he has nothing to lose. The people will be cheated by ShinRa one last time. Even in death, Rufus hadn't lost his touch. The scene which greeted the rioters below, the people calling for justice at last, would not be one of terror, would not be an empty office whence the leader of the world had fled like some frightened animal. No.

It was still crystal clear in his mind's eye - the body slumped back in the chair, no longer hidden from the world by a blanket, but brazen in what had remained his trademark black and white, the eyepatch over his eye giving him an air of danger rather than weakness. The only crack in that icy facade is the neat hole in his forehead, the trickle of blood the only disturbance to those crisp lines of black and white which define him.

He can remember the sound of Rufus' voice as he gave that order, the slight hitch in his own breathing barely concealed as he stared into those sparklingly chill blue eyes. But Turks obeyed orders, and so he had withdrawn his gun and cocked it surely, pressing the end of the barrel just barely to the centre of Rufus' forehead. His heartbeat had neither quickened nor slowed, but remained steady. This was second nature to him now, and not even this execution would make him flinch. He could remember the feeling of the trigger as it passed the point of no return, and the feeling of the recoil shooting up his arm. Then, he had turned his back, and walked away, as around him the world burned to ash. A new Gaia would emerge from the ashes of the ShinRa Corporation, but their time had come to an end.

He had many memories of the last fifteen years, the last twenty, almost, and they flashed before his eyes now in a cascade of painless recollection. He was numb now, this close to the end, and had long ago made peace of sorts with whatever had once been his conscience, even if that peace had been bought in a deal with the devil. He could remember nothing, now, before the Turks. That was what the intiation had been, that cascade of pain until the body and spirit broke, and then, at the final moment, on the edge of consciousness, in a hazy world of grey, the words fell into the soul, and a Turk was born.

He remembered his first kill - they all did. He could recall the sweat on his brow, the cold weight in his gut as he had pulled that trigger. It became easier after the first one. They began to blend together. Soon enough, you couldn't remember faces or names, and the screams blended into one long one which echoed in dreams and silence.

He remembered being made Rufus' bodyguard, seeing then the change between the boy he had known and the man that boy had become. He remembered working ever closer with him, and when that relationship had changed. He remembered when he had fought back, and when he had stopped resisting. He remembered the allure of power, and that addictive chance to taste it. He remembered every encounter with Rufus in vivid detail, even where every mission had blended into one. He remembered everything the Turks had made him, and everything he had become in that spiral of destruction.

He relived his life on the blank screen before his eyes, as he stared, still unseeing, into the shades of black and grey, while eerie silence seemed to echo in his ears. The screams had stopped now, finally ceasing at the end, and he was suddenly conscious of every part of himself.

One breath, inhale.

He shifted, reaching into his jacket once more, closing his hand around that reassuring weight of the gun grip.

Exhale.

He withdrew it smoothly, turning it over in his hands, studying it with seeming curiousity, as if he had never really examined it before.

Inhale.

He closed his eyes, checking with his fingers only whether there was a shot left in the magazine. One shot. How ironic.

Every click professional, he readied the gun to fire again.

Exhale.

That cool ring against his forehead, that faintest of pressures.

Inhale.

The click dropped into the silence of the office, disturbing it like a stone causing ripples on a pond as the pistol was cocked.

Exhale.

In one smooth motion he pressed the trigger past the point of no return...

And the world of ShinRa became only a memory.


End file.
